he is insupportable,” said a youthful nephew of a virtuous clergyman of this type in my presence the other day, adding, after reflection, “He seems to think that to die is the only really satisfactory thing that any one ever does.”  That is the worst of carrying out the precept, “Set your affections on things above, not on things of the earth,” too literally.  It is not so good a precept, after all, as “If a man love not his brother, whom he hath seen, how shall he love God, Whom he hath not seen?” It is somehow an incomplete philosophy to despise the only definite existence we are certain of possessing.  One desires a richer thing than that, a philosophy that ends in temperance, rather than in a harsh asceticism.

The handling of life that seems the most desirable is the method which the Platonic Socrates employed.  Perhaps he was an ideal figure; but yet there are few figures more real.  There we have an elderly man of incomparable ugliness, who is yet delightfully and perennially youthful, bubbling over with interest, affection, courtesy, humour, admiration.  With what a delicious mixture of irony and tenderness he treats the young men who surround him!  When some lively sparks made up their minds to do what we now call “rag” him, dressed themselves up as Furies, and ran out upon him as he turned a dark corner on his way home, Socrates was not in the least degree disturbed, but discoursed with them readily on many matters and particularly on temperance; when at the banquet the topers disappear, one by one, under the table, Socrates, who, besides taking his due share of the wine, had filled and drunk the contents of the wine-cooler, is found cheerfully sitting, crowned with roses, among the expiring lamps, in the grey of the morning, discussing the higher mathematics.  He is never sick or sorry; he is poor and has a scolding wife; he fasts or eats as circumstances dictate; he never does anything in particular, but he has always infinite leisure to have his talk out.  Is he drawn for military service? he goes off, with an entire indifference to the hardships of the campaign.  When the force is routed, he stalks deliberately off the field, looking round him like a great bird, with the kind of air that makes pursuers let people alone, as Alcibiades said.  And when the final catastrophe draws near, he defends himself under a capital charge with infinite good-humour; he has cared nothing for slander and misrepresentation all his life, and why should he begin now?  In the last inspired scene, he is the only man of the group who keeps his courteous tranquillity to the end; he had been sent into the world, he had lived his life, why should he fear to be dismissed?  It matters little, in the presence of this august imagination, if the real Socrates was a rude and prosy person, who came by his death simply because the lively Athenians could tolerate anything but a bore!